VIDEO: Tom Hanks Ad-Libs When Medical Emergency Halts Performance of HENRY IV

The show must go on, as they say! During a recent performance of Henry IV at the Japanese Garden in Los Angeles, Tom Hanks tested that old phrase.

Deadline reports that a member of the audience experienced a medical emergency, causing the show to come to a halt. The audience member fell unconscious and crew members with medical training attempted to give first aid, before paramedics arrived. The show paused for 20 minutes, and the audience was becoming restless.

That's when Hanks decided to take over, entertaining the audience with adlibs, addressing the crowd in character, and even bringing audience members on stage.

When people tried to leave, Hanks-as-Falstaff would call them out, addressing them as "scurvy rogues who stood up from their seats" and an "insult to all actors and to Shakespeare himself."

Eventually, the emergency was resolved and the show was actually able to go on.

Read more on Deadline.

"Henry IV," staged by Tony Award winning director Daniel Sullivan, featuring Tom Hanks in his Los Angeles stage debut as Shakespeare's greatest comedic character Sir John Falstaff, with Harry Groener as Northumberland, Hamish Linklater as Prince Hal, Joe Morton as Henry IV, and Rondi Reed as Mistress Quickly. Director Dan Sullivan has distilled the exploits of Falstaff - "the villainous and abominable misleader of youth" - and his ne'er-do-well protégé Prince Hal from "Henry IV Parts One and Two," into an evening of Shakespeare's finest and most touching comedy.

The show runs through July 1. For more information, visit https://www.shakespearecenter.org/scla-downtown-presents/2018/6/5/henry-iv.

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